Overture.

Looking back, it feels as if last weekend was a kind of overture to the days which would follow; last weekend all sorts of grim themes were first properly sounded.
I remember coming back from my usual early Saturday morning whizz round Sainsbury's, astonished at how busy the supermarket had been. Five days later I was shopping again, with a short list of very ordinary items - satsumas, bananas, chicken, chickpeas, bread, milk - and I hadn't been able to get any of them.
On Saturday night Susie and I had gone out for an all too rare 'date night'. The restaurant was almost empty and felt very quiet. Tonight it will be silent, with all restaurants and bars now having been closed.
And on Sunday morning, even though we had two baptisms as part of the Parish Eucharist, there very very few 'bums on pews.' It felt so awful to anoint the children being baptised, with a tissue over my finger. And then during Communion, to bless the children who came forward with my hand a foot above their heads felt numbing. I watched my sons come forward, and knew I couldn't touch them either, and tears tried to rise.
On Tuesday the Archbishops of Canterbury suspended all public worship.
In so many different ways, were in a time when touch, when contact, is being suspended, forbidden - and for good reasons, I know, I understand. But this will be a hard long Lent we will be making a pilgrimage through over the months ahead, and nobody seems to know when new life might come, when we might know an Easter.
This morning I woke up to the sound of a helicopter hovering somewhere nearby. I lay listening, it didn't seem to be moving, and I felt an anxiety in my heart - what did the sound mean? What painful new reality was this sound an overture to?
And then I heard my six year-old, gustily singing one of his favourite songs: 'I won't fear what tomorrow brings, with each morning I'll rise and sing.'

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reAlJKv7ptU

A month from today, perhaps.

A month from today I begin a pilgrimage.

That’s not quite right.

A month from today I begin three pilgrimages.

On Easter Monday I drive up to Scotland with my wife, Susie, and our children, James and Barnaby. The next day I begin a ‘little pilgrimage’, as I carry some of my Mum’s ashes from her birthplace in Bishopbriggs, to Carrick Castle, where she used to enjoy childhood holidays: just a few years ago we had enjoyed a big family celebration of her seventieth birthday there. Last October, Mum died.

After a bit of travel jiggery-pokery, on the Saturday of that week we’ll materialise on Lindisfarne and then the four of us will walk six miles to Fenwick. This will be the start of my ‘big pilgrimage’; a walk between those two great holy islands of Lindisfarne and Iona.

And the third pilgrimage is perhaps the biggest of all. Later in the summer we’ll be leaving Edmonton and the four of us will be travelling to Berkhamsted, where I’ll take up the position of Rector of St Peter’s. That will be several journeys in one. I’ve been living in North London for twenty years. Susie has lived here for almost her whole life. The boys have never lived anywhere else. It will be an exciting new beginning for us; but like most new beginnings, there will be some painful farewells to navigate first.

I have no doubt that somehow those three pilgrimages might be interwoven. Hopefully four weeks of walking will help me to figure out how.

That’s not quite right.

Hopefully four weeks of walking will help me to begin to see the weave.

At dinner last night Susie started talking about the coronavirus. At first I thought that this was  just a general chat, but then I realized that in fact we were talking about my pilgrimage, and whether it would be possible for me to go at all.

In an instant I felt slightly aggrieved: I had to make this journey, there would be no other time, what risk could there be in me walking across remote parts of Scotland?

A heartbeat later I felt ashamed of my instinctive self-centredness.

Instagramming.

The Pilgrim's Cairn blogspot was tucked up in bed and settling in for its decade long sleep, a good six months before Instagram first appeared.
This time around I'll have a few more pictures to share here: @pilgrimscairn
Over the next few weeks, as I get ready to start the pilgrimage on Saturday 18th April, I'll share some pictures from the pilgrimage I made ten years ago.
One picture though, will most definitely not be appearing on Instagram...